It's no surprise that jobs and the economy top current worries, as they have for the past couple of years. The question about the most important problem in 25 years provides an interesting window into what the public sees as troubling trends for the future. Besides the deficit, the list includes the economy, environment, health care and energy, and certainly you can make a case for any of them as a disturbing trend for the future. But the deficit has seen a big jump, from under 5 percent to 14 percent in the survey.

The most interesting thing is that difference in urgency. Right now the deficit is No. 5 on the Gallup list of most important current problems, at 8 percent, which is significant but still pretty far back compared to 31 percent for unemployment, 24 percent for the economy overall, 20 percent for health care and 10 percent for general "dissatisfaction with government." Yet it leads the list of long-term problems.

And in this case, the experts would mostly agree. The Committee on the Fiscal Future report warns that action needs to be taken to control the long-term budget problem – but also said the government should hold off another year in order to deal with the current economic crisis. Most budget experts would argue that the current federal deficits, huge as they are, aren't as scary as the long-term projections that show the U.S. public debt becoming larger than our entire economy in a little more than 10 years.